Rosemarie DiBiase, PhD

Education

PhD, Temple University

MA, Temple University

BA, University of New Hampshire

Specialty Areas

Social and emotional development in childhood and adolescence; biological-psychological-social interactions in the developmental process; the development of psychological disorders in childhood and adolescence

In the most general terms, I am interested in how individual characteristics and contexts transact over time to influence both normal and abnormal developmental. My work has been primarily in the areas of social and emotional development with the overarching theme of my research being exploration of how constitutional characteristics, like temperament and self-regulation, in conjunction with specific environments are predictive of developmental outcomes. In past work, I have looked at how infant temperament, attachment, and heart rate variability predicted later emotional development. My more recent work has focused on older at risk children, looking at how temperament (self-regulatory behavior), culture, and family relationships can be used to predict feelings of self-competence and behavior problems. Currently, I am working on a large longitudinal study with preschoolers attending Head Start that expands on these themes and in addition, looks at ways in which economically disadvantaged minority and non-minority children differ from their non-disadvantaged counterparts in both cognitive and socioemotional development. In the future I plan to extend my work to adolescents to examine how temperament, mental health and parental relations, among other things, influence successful and unsuccessful transition to college life.

Wheeler, A., DiBiase, R. & Miller, P. M. (2015, October). Controlling Parenting as a Moderator of Shy Temperament in the Development of Internalizing Problems in Preschoolers. Presented at the meeting for the Society for the Study of Human Development, Austin TX.